


Succor

by pluperfectsunrise



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Female Harry Potter, Soulmates, Swearing, bisexual!harry, brief scene of sexual harrassment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2019-07-06 18:45:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15891885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pluperfectsunrise/pseuds/pluperfectsunrise
Summary: Five times Severus Snape comforted Harry Potter, and one time Harry comforted him.





	1. Erised

**Author's Note:**

> This fic came into my head and demanded to be written. It has six chapters and an epilogue. It starts out slow and gains momentum. It's girl!Harry, since girl!Harry is lots of fun. I do try to make her as Harry-ish as I can.
> 
> I don't own the world or characters of Harry Potter. I'm just borrowing them for my own enjoyment (and hopefully yours).

The room where she’d found it was dusty and forgotten, but the mirror itself was bright and gleaming. Harry raised a hand to touch it, and her mother raised hers until their fingertips seemed to brush.

“Miss Potter,” she heard behind her.

Lost as she’d been in staring at the glass, the sound of that particular voice had her whipping around, wand raised. “Stay back,” Harry threatened. She’d been so stupid not to wear the invisibility cloak tonight. She couldn’t have put herself in a more vulnerable position if she’d tried.

“And what are you planning to do with that?” Snape sneered at her, one imperious brow lifting. “Levitate a feather at me? Transfigure a saucer into a teacup?”

Harry pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose with one hand and tried to look fierce. Her wand hand was unwavering.

To her surprise, Snape did nothing at this but roll his eyes. “Come,” he said abruptly, turning toward the door that he’d left open.

A sudden surge of panic flared through her. “Wait!” Harry called, gesturing back at the mirror, suddenly not caring that she was speaking to a man who’d nearly killed her during her first Quidditch match. “Do you see—my parents—are they trapped in there? Ron couldn’t see them—”

“The mirror reflects what you desire the most, not what is real,” Snape told her slowly.

“Oh.”

Even though she hadn’t been struck, Harry felt sort of like when Dudley punched her in the stomach. To her shame, she felt tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. She didn’t want to cry in front of Snape.

“Come along,” he repeated above her, stepping closer until her vision was filled with the black wall of his robes—and his voice almost sounded gentle this time.

No, Snape was a mean git. She must have misheard.

Taking a deep breath, Harry straightened from where she’d hunched forward slightly, meeting his eyes. “Where?”

“Back to your dormitory, obviously.” 

That was all right, then. She nodded to show she’d cooperate—although she still wouldn’t lower her wand.

She had to walk twice as quickly as normal to keep up with the man as they made their way back through the castle, and he didn’t speak again until they were outside the Gryffindor portrait hole. “If I find you wandering the halls after curfew a second time, I will take a minimum of fifty House points,” he informed her when they finally stopped, his tone distant and cold.

“All right,” Harry answered slowly and suspiciously, peering up at him. Did that mean he wasn’t going to take points now?

Snape apparently wasn’t finished. “The spell to disarm an opponent is Expelliarmus,” he clipped out. He performed a quick swish of his wand to demonstrate, then ordered, “Practice it.”

Harry’s mouth fell open. Why would he teach her how to protect herself? Hadn’t he hexed her broom?

Before she could figure out how to respond, he was speaking yet again, his gaze locked somewhere above her head. “Fixating on the impossible will only make you bitter and sick,” he said in a quieter tone, and she knew he was talking about the mirror again, the family she’d seen there who she would never get the chance to meet. “It would be far better to set your sights on something that you could conceivably achieve by working for it.”

That…made a surprising amount of sense.

And apparently Snape was finally finished, because he was stepping back, turning on one heel with a dramatic flair of black fabric. “Wait!” she cried for the second time in this very strange meeting, reaching out to catch a fistful of his robes.

The man stared down at her hand, and she released her grip, embarrassed. “I just…wanted to know…what you saw in the mirror,” she explained, hardly believing her own daring.

Above her, Snape’s eyes were dark and unfathomable. His expression didn’t change.

“Your reflection,” he finally said.

Harry blinked. “Oh.” She didn’t know why she felt so disappointed at this non-answer. She shoved her left hand into her pocket, realizing that the other, which held her wand, had relaxed and lowered some time ago. “Guess it didn’t work for you.”

Snape snorted and swept away down the corridor without another word.

Well.

That had been…

She shook her head to dislodge the fuzziness and confusion. She’d sat in front of that mirror all night; she needed sleep before she could process this, figure out if it meant that she should hate the Potions Master a bit less.

“Expelliarmus,” she whispered to herself after she climbed into the portrait hole, practicing the movement he’d shown her. She’d test it on Ron later to see if it worked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked it? Interested to find out what happens? Let me know.


	2. Luminarium

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the kudos and lovely comments on the first chapter! Hope you like this one too.

It wasn’t that the floor of the Great Hall was uncomfortable, as the teachers had laid down cushioning charms. And it wasn’t that the whispering of the other students was keeping her awake, since it had been about an hour since even the loudest whispers had turned to snores.

It was just that Sirius Black was somewhere in the castle. He’d slashed the Fat Lady’s portrait, presumably looking for the Girl Who Lived. Was he in league with Voldemort? Would Harry have to fight for her life again before the year was out?

Finally giving up the attempt to calm her racing thoughts, Harry opened her eyes and reached for her glasses. 

The first thing she saw was Snape walking with measured steps between the rows of slumbering students, the glowing tip of his wand waving to and fro in the darkness. There were other sights to see—the moon and stars on the enchanted ceiling, Professor Flitwick doing the same on the other side of the hall—but Harry's eyes traveled back to Snape as inescapably as water flowing downhill.

This had been happening lately. It was getting harder and harder not to watch him all the time. She’d ruined two potions that month alone because her gaze kept gravitating toward him in class instead of staying on her work.

He was just such a puzzle. Even though it had turned out that he wasn’t trying to steal the sorcerer’s stone in first year, he was still a cold-hearted and unfair bastard. And yet, whenever she thought she hated him, she would remember _expelliarmus_ and _your reflection_ and feel as if something inside of her was trying to burst into bloom.

She rubbed the scar on her forehead and groaned to herself. Thinking about the Potions Master was not helping her sleep. Perhaps she should try focusing on something else…like...why Ron and Hermione were bickering so much...or...the twins' latest prank...or...the proper way to bow to hippogriffs...

The measured footsteps drew closer. The light from a wandtip flickered across her face.

Harry couldn't say why, but instead of closing her eyes and pretending to be asleep, she sat up. “Professor,” she acknowledged tiredly, scrubbing a hand through her hair.

She must have taken him by surprise. “Miss Potter,” he answered after a long pause. 

The man was standing a pace away in the aisle between sleeping bags. He extinguished the Lumos on his wand. “Planning an asinine scheme to catch our intruder singlehandedly?” he asked when the silence stretched.

He'd spoken quietly, as had she. Glancing around, Harry saw that none of the other students were stirring—not even the mop of hair that was all that was visible of Parvati to her left. 

“I wouldn’t do that,” she finally answered. Something about being here with him, the only two people awake in a sea of sleeping forms under the tapestry of the night sky, made her want to be sincere. “I know he’s a murderer.”

She heard a faint huff. “Forgive me if I have no faith in your pragmatism."

 _Pragmatism_ , Harry repeated to herself. She’d ask Hermione what it meant tomorrow to figure out if she should be mad.

“Maybe I find it hard to sleep when there’s a murderer on the loose,” she offered with an edge of sarcasm. He didn’t need to know that it was the truth, and that her fear made her feel foolish and weak. She wasn’t scared of Sirius Black, exactly—it was just that it wasn't getting any easier, being at the center of everything all the time. And she'd had her first period last week, which had been surprisingly painful and awkward to deal with. And every night since school began, she’d dreamed of that Dementor on the train, the screaming woman, the feeling of gray and utter hopelessness that had washed through her like high tide…

Above her, Snape was little but a shadow. The planets twirled on an indigo canvas behind him, a cloud crossing the moon.

“Do you doubt my ability to protect you?” 

He’d spoken so lowly that she almost hadn’t heard him—and even then, she wondered if she'd misunderstood. 

Harry opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Not…your _ability,_ ” she finally said, as it was his intentions that she couldn’t fathom.

To her shock, she thought she saw a glimmer of amusement in the shadows of the man’s eyes.

“Go to sleep, you foolish girl.”

Harry shivered slightly. If he was mocking her, it sounded different than when he tormented her in class. She couldn’t say exactly why—but now the blood was rushing in her ears, the hairs standing up on her skin...

Bloody Snape. Why did he have to be so sodding confusing all the time? She exhaled in a gust, lay back down, and closed her eyes with her trademark determination. She could pretend for a while, if only to get him to go away.

To Harry’s surprise, though, she soon found real drowsiness stealing through her, making her thoughts loose and her limbs heavy. She was spinning, spinning under the wheeling night sky; and then she was spinning down into darkness.

She dreamed, but not of the train and the Dementor.

She dreamed of a boy with unkempt black hair, ratty clothing, and sharp black eyes. She knew in the dream that she’d dreamed of him before; she also knew that she would forget this when she woke up. 

She always did, after all.

~

Snape had made it abundantly clear to anyone with eyes that he didn’t trust Professor Lupin. Harry didn’t trust Snape, but she trusted him enough to take that into consideration and avoid trusting Lupin entirely as well.

Therefore, when Lupin showed up in the Shrieking Shack and started hugging the newly transformed Sirius Black, Harry wasn’t quite as dismayed as one might have thought.

Of course, that didn’t mean she hesitated in putting Snape out of action when he revealed himself in turn.

But something about it didn't sit right with her. So after it was all over—after Sirius had flown away on Buckbeak and all was well, except that Peter Pettigrew escaped—Harry waited outside of the Potion Master’s quarters for an hour under her invisibility cloak.

If any Slytherins had been nearby when he approached, she would have stayed hidden. As it was, she was able to remove the cloak and clear her throat as he was taking down his wards.

He swung around to face her, eyes narrowing to angry slits when they landed on her face.

If looks could cause spontaneous blisters… Harry squared her shoulders and mustered her reserves of calm. She could do this.

"Miss Potter, to what do I owe this _delightful_ —"

“I’m sorry I hexed you," she blurted before he could finish.

The air hissing out from between his crooked teeth, Snape took a step closer. “And do you think one meager apology is sufficient?” he spat.

She’d never, she suspected, seen him in a temper quite this foul.

He loomed even nearer, until he was almost pressing her against the wall. He smelled like musk and garden earth. “Famous Harry Potter says _sorry_ and expects all to be instantly forgiven, no matter the havoc caused by her arrogance and utter lack of—”

“You were very brave,” she interrupted again, lifting her chin.

Snape’s mouth closed soundlessly on his tirade.

Because she’d said what she’d wanted to say, Harry wiggled out from where he had trapped her and left. 

It was rather satisfying, she reflected, to be the one who rattled his cage.


	3. Occlumency

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there! Thank you for the wonderful comments and kudos on the last chapter.
> 
> TW: Derogatory language from idiotic teenage boys.
> 
> There's probably more than one instance of comforting in this one, but I don't think anyone will complain ;)

To Harry’s surprise and delight, apologizing to Snape at the end of third year seemed to lead to a truce.

In fourth year, he didn’t glare as much. He stopped the Slytherins from reading Skeeter’s articles about Harry in class. He even seemed to believe her when she told him that she wasn’t the one stealing the ingredients for Polyjuice Potion from his stores.

And she often noticed him watching her with a look of…well, she didn’t quite know the word for it. Maybe consternation. And once or twice, when she would say something particularly cheeky in his direction, she swore she saw his lips twitch before he docked House points.

She learned he'd been a Death Eater, but also a spy. Of course, she knew she couldn’t trust him. Dumbledore believed in Snape’s loyalty to the Light, and Harry wanted to as well—but it would be stupid to do that just because he’d taught her Expelliarmus and helped her fall asleep once.

Then Voldemort came back at the end of the tournament, and everything changed.

~

Kneeling, Harry clutched her head. Dumbledore, she thought with a fair bit of acid, hadn’t mentioned how much learning Occlumency would hurt.

"Again," came an uncompromising voice above her.

Opening her eyes to slits, Harry watched Snape’s dragonhide boots, the wavering hem of his robes. If she looked up further, she knew exactly what she'd see. He'd have his arms crossed, the long fingers of his right hand still curled elegantly around the dark base of his wand. And above that would be his sallow face framed by lanky black hair, sneering—but somehow still expressionless.

There had been no warmth when he looked at her, this year. When he wasn’t testy and irritable, he was wooden and cold. And every week, the circles under his eyes got darker.

"You're wasting my time, Potter."

“Sorry,” she mumbled, climbing to her feet. “I just—need—to catch—my breath.”

Snape’s face was just as she’d imagined it. “Do you think the Dark Lord will give you time to collect yourself?” he demanded. Before she could answer, he raised his wand again and hissed, “ _Legilimens_.”

She tried to throw him out; she really did. But Occlumency, it seemed, was one of the first things Harry had encountered that she was truly and spectacularly bad at. They'd been trying for three weeks now, and Harry was just as shite at defending her mind as when they’d started. Sometimes her body would throw an instinctive hex at her teacher when he got too deep, too close to things she didn't want him to see—but most of the time, she'd end up panting and woozy on the floor, released only because he'd ended the spell.

She hated this. She hated that Snape had access to her private thoughts; she hated that she’d ever believed he was anything but a cruel and manipulative bastard.

And now he sank into her mind once again, curling between memories, pushing nudging pulling. Dinner that evening in the Great Hall, where Seamus had deliberately moved seats when she’d sat near him; the Troll she’d gotten on a Herbology essay last month; the burning pain of the knife in her arm, Voldemort rising from the ooze of bone and blood in Pettigrew's cauldron—

Mercifully, Snape retreated sideways, away from that particular memory. But he was already too far down, to the part of Harry that was lying hungry in her cupboard all night, and the other girls in Muggle primary school were taunting her for her mended glasses and baggy boys’ hand-me-downs. And then it was a sweltering evening in August in Little Whinging, the faces of Dudley and his cronies gone slack with shock as dark, floating figures descended from above to blot out the streetlamps and stars...

_No,_ Harry thought with mounting panic. _Not this one._

But yes, this one. The Dementors descended, one to Dudley, the second to Dudley's friend Piers Polkiss. With her mother's scream in her ears and visions of Voldemort swimming in her eyes, Harry raised her wand and spoke the words and pulled and pulled for her Patronus, but there was nothing there.

She thought of Ron's wolfish grin, the way Hermione covered her mouth with one hand when she giggled, Sirius's mad laughter as he flew away on Buckbeak.

Her wand sputtered out a thin white mist that dissolved almost instantly.

She thought of Hagrid telling her that magic was real, that there was a world where she would finally belong.

The mist was even thinner this time. A small ball of light emerged from between Dudley's blue lips and began to stream toward the blackness underneath the Dementor's hood.

Reaching deep inside herself, deeper than she'd ever gone while awake, Harry thought of flaring black robes and oily black hair and piercing black eyes and a scowl and a sneer and a silky smooth voice and surprise and safety and warmth.

In class; striding the halls, his robes flaring; picking at his food in the Great Hall with a sour expression; in the stands as she completed the First Task, face lifted toward her with his total attention, transformed—

The stag galloped out of her wand. The Dementors fled.

Snape pulled back.

The first thing Harry noticed when the world swam back into focus was that the man had gone pale. Well, paler.

Good. “That,” she informed him, hearing the fury shake her voice, “was _mine._ ”

She'd been angry—so angry—for the majority of the year, but it had never been this righteous and blinding before.

Picking up one of the jars of potions ingredients that lined Snape’s office, she threw it into the opposite wall. 

And another. And another.

And why not just knock a whole shelf down? Much more efficient that way, and really bloody satisfying, to shatter that much glass at once—

Strong hands caught her arms and pinned them to her sides.

Harry spat out a breath and struggled against the grip. “Letgo!” she ordered in a single gasp, feeling the wild magic in her core start to flare.

The man grunted, obviously winded from holding her in place against his body—and then his low voice was speaking directly into her ear. “Since the moment I learned of your existence, I’ve wanted nothing more than to ensure that you remained intact and shielded from harm.”

Harry stopped struggling.

She dropped her head to stare down at the threadbare rug, which was currently covered in glass and twigs and dead insects and slimy animal viscera. Bile rose in her throat. She forced it back down.

“My reflection,” she finally answered, an old mystery solved at last. 

Snape nodded against her hair.

He was solid behind her, rows of buttons bracketing her spine. He inhaled and exhaled, and she found herself mirroring the movement. It was funny, Harry thought dizzily, how you could hate someone half the time and still breathe in tandem with them.

Eventually, the grip on her arms loosened. Catching a handful of Snape's robes, Harry twisted to face him. “Then why are you so terrible to me?” she demanded, staring up into his thin face. “Why can’t you see that I—”

Snape took two steps back, retreating out of arms' length to the opposite wall. He raised his wand and pointed it at the Pensieve in the corner. The top slid open.

His expression was less controlled than she’d ever seen it, drained and strange. His eyes were wild. “Take it," he rasped. "You might as fucking well.”

Harry's breath hitched. Was he giving her permission to…look?

She wasn't going to allow him the chance to change his mind. Her heart in her throat, she closed the distance to the Pensieve in two steps. 

She lowered her head and tumbled down through gray into the muted colors of an old story.

Time passed (a man’s lifetime, wretched and heartbreaking and sweet).

When Harry staggered back out, she didn’t think she could speak. Snape—and her father—her _mother_ —

How hadn’t she known? Dumbledore wouldn't have told her, since Snape had demanded his silence—but Sirius. Lupin. _Why hadn’t anyone told her?_

Harry could feel tears streaming down her face. Through her blurred vision, the man was little more than a dark figure leaning against the opposite wall. “Snape…” she began, her voice cracking.

“Get out,” he interrupted, his tone exhausted and sharp. “Leave me be.”

“But I—”

“LEAVE!” he thundered, taking a step toward her with his crooked teeth bared. “Before I make you pay for what you’ve done!”

His hands were clenched into fists. The ruins of his potions stores littered the ground around his feet.

Harry ran.

~

She skived off from her classes the next day and sat by the edge of the lake under her invisibility cloak for hours. She skipped rocks and watched the ripples. Sometimes, she cried.

Mostly, she did her best to sort through her thoughts. There was a lot to process all at once.

Yes, there was a prophecy about her. All right. She would have to kill Voldemort or die trying. That certainly wasn't fair, but it also wasn't exactly a surprise. And there was nothing she could do about it right now that she wasn't already doing.

But Snape. What the fuck was she supposed to do about Snape? 

She’d spent a fair amount (okay, quite a lot) of the past four and a half years obsessing—ahem, _puzzling_ over the man. And she’d known since the mirror of Erised that he wasn’t as villainous as she’d initially believed. It was an early lesson in the fact that appearances—and first impressions—could be misleading.

But she’d never expected anything like this.

He’d been friends with her mother. Best friends. He’d been bullied and tormented by her father and the other Marauders.

He’d joined the Death Eaters after he lost her mother’s friendship. He’d regretted this as soon as the Potters were targeted. He’d gone to great lengths to protect them.

He’d failed.

He’d promised that he would protect her, Harry, in her mother’s stead. And in the last year, he’d returned to the extremely dangerous occupation of double agent in the Death Eaters’ ranks.

He was atoning for his past mistakes, and he was loyal, brave, and true. So she forgave him, didn’t she? 

It wasn’t even really a question. She suspected that she'd done it before she even left the Pensieve.

After coming to this realization, Harry felt lighter. But the question remained—what was she going to do about it?

~

When Harry raised her fist to knock on Snape’s office door the next day, she felt as if a swarm of butterflies had colonized her stomach.

“Enter,” came the familiar drawl. 

When she obeyed, she saw Snape sitting behind his desk, a quill in hand and a stack of parchment in front of him. A flicker of surprise crossed the man’s face as she let the door swing closed behind her, but otherwise he seemed frozen in place. “Miss…Potter,” he said slowly.

It was so like how he’d said it that night two years ago in the Great Hall. “Professor,” she managed.

After a moment of wavering, his face seemed to decide to contort into one of its nastiest expressions. “Come for more fodder for the rumor mill?” he demanded.

Harry frowned. She had a feeling that she knew where this was going. “No,” she answered carefully.

“There’s no need to play coy." Voice silky and dangerous, the man seemed to radiate accusation. "I’m sure Gryffindor Tower has had some _delightful_ evenings of chitchat at my expen—"

“I said no,” Harry interrupted firmly. Was that really what he thought of her? “I haven’t told anyone. I’m not going to jeopardize your position like that.”

He stared at her, hard.

“Then why are you here?” he finally asked, seemingly at a loss.

Harry kept her spine straight, letting herself be scrutinized. “It’s Wednesday, Professor," she pointed out quietly. "I’m here to learn Occlumency.”

“Are you.”

There were sandstorms that were less dry than his tone. Snape obviously hadn’t believed that their lessons would continue. 

What had he been thinking? “I have to, now," Harry explained, mustering her Gryffindor courage and forging ahead. "Otherwise Vold—old snake-face could see that you’re not as loyal as he thinks.” Snape had put his life in her hands by showing her his memories. She wasn’t going to take that for granted.

The man was wearing an expression of studied neutrality. “I could Obliviate you,” he said after letting the silence stretch.

Harry’s lips parted in shock. She honestly hadn't considered the fact that Snape could take what he'd shown her away—and probably fairly easily, considering his talent in mind magic.

"You—you said you wanted to protect me," she stammered. "How would me being ignorant help anything?"

When Snape continued regarding her without answering, Harry paused to gather her tumultuous thoughts. “I know I haven’t been a good student so far,” she finally said. “And I’m sorry for that. I really am. But I promise I’ll try harder. I’ll practice and study outside of our sessions, every chance I get. I’ll do whatever you say. Just—” She cut herself off, meeting his eyes pleadingly. She didn’t want to beg—but she couldn’t bear the thought of being made to forget the truth, now that she knew it at last.

Snape was a difficult man to read at the best of times, but now was worse than ever. His dark eyes considered her, and Harry didn't feel his presence in her mind at all. 

“Fine,” he snapped, just when Harry was about to give up hope.

She exhaled in relief.

“I am marking the third-year Hufflepuffs’ sorry attempts at describing the properties of blood replenishers," he added in the same stilted tone. "We will begin once I’ve finished.”

Did that mean she was supposed to sit?

Harry pulled out the chair across from him and planted herself in it tentatively, watching him work. “Your office looks nice,” she offered after a minute.

Snape glanced up from his marking to shoot her a highly unimpressed look.

For some reason, this made her cheeks heat. “I mean, it’s not nice, exactly—" Because that would be far too much of a stretch for the gloomy, claustrophobic space. “–but it’s not…ruined.” His shelves had been fixed, the glass jars that she’d smashed either mended or replaced. They were even full of ingredients again.

The man gave her his full attention once more. “Your histrionics buggered my budget for the term,” he informed her icily.

“Right.” Harry squared her shoulders. “I can pay you back.”

Snape's eyes blazed, the quill in his hand coming dangerously close to snapping. “How like your father, believing that any mistake can be erased with the application of galleons—”

“In detentions,” she finished, barely keeping herself from rolling her eyes. The man was pricklier than a cactus. “I’ll hand-scrub your cauldrons for a month. Or longer. The rest of the year, if you think that’s fair.” And if ongoing detentions with Snape had the benefit of getting her out of Umbridge’s little torture sessions, all the better.

That shut him up, as she'd intended. Before Harry could congratulate herself too much, however, Snape was asking, “And you think I’d be willing to endure your company for that long?”

This nettled her. “I’m not so bad, once you get to know me,” she insisted, crossing her arms over her chest.

And there it was—a faint glint of amusement in his eyes, the tiniest twitch of his lips.

“I’ll think about it,” the man finally answered, carefully picking up a fresh quill, dipping it in blood-red ink, and beginning his marking once again.

~

After that, things did get better.

Snape went no easier on her, and Harry didn’t somehow magically (ha bloody ha) gain a talent for shielding her mind—but still, things were better.

Try as she might to hide it, several of her friends noticed her change in attitude. Luna told her that it was lovely she’d managed to clear out so many Wrackspurts; Neville smiled at her more often because she was smiling at him. And after Ron and Hermione dropped one too many casual but pointed questions, Harry explained that she’d made a breakthrough in her sessions with Snape, keeping the details vague.

Even the twins noticed the difference. During one DA meeting, they slunk up on either side of her while she was watching the older members practice Protego, each linking an arm through her elbows. 

“So what is it, Harry?” they asked at once.

“Has old Fudge choked on some nougat?” added the one who Harry was fairly sure was Fred.

“Have you figured out the secret to our dear Umbridge’s demise?” put in the other, who was probably George.

Harry glanced between them, bemused. “What are you two talking about?” She planted her feet so that they'd have a hard time lifting her if they tried. 

They gave her identical looks of wide-eyed innocence.

“We merely want to know—"

“—what has you looking—"

“—so dead chuffed,” they explained.

Harry blinked and frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Right.”

“Of course not.”

“Because it’s not written—“

“—all over your face.”

“Er...it is?”

The twins exchanged a glance over her head.

“You’ve got a bounce in your step,” said George. 

“Your eyes are sparkling,” added Fred. 

“Even your hair is fluffier!” they finished at the same time.

“They’re right, Harry,” Ginny offered. She’d been practicing her famous Bat-Bogey Hex nearby, but she’d stopped to listen as soon as Fred and George showed up. A small line appeared between her eyebrows. “You just seem…happier lately. Are you seeing someone?”

Harry spluttered, blushing to the tips of her ears. What a ridiculous idea. 

“I’m just glad you lot are making so much progress,” she settled for saying, squeezing Ginny briefly on the shoulder and scampering away before Fred and George could start in on her again. What would they think if they found out the real reason for her improved spirits?

A part of her wished that she could tell everyone the truth, make them see that the Potions Master they'd despised for so long was actually just a brave and honorable man with a complicated past. But she knew she couldn’t, for Snape’s own protection.

Still, it was true, what Ginny had said: she was happier now. Yes, she’d felt as if her entire world had been turned upside down when she’d seen Snape’s memories. And she had no idea how to act around him now, most of the time. And there was a prophecy that would turn her into either a murderer or a corpse.

And yet, ever since that fateful lesson where he’d opened his Pensieve, Harry had felt steadier and more like herself than she had in months. Years, even.

Severus Snape was on her side.

She didn’t know why that made such a big difference—but it did.

~

The winter frost thawed; the DA was discovered, and Dumbledore was ousted in favor of Umbridge; Ron ranted for days, and Hermione channeled her anger into drawing up an insane study schedule for the three of them for the upcoming OWLs.

And somewhere in the midst of it all, Harry decided that the thing about Snape was that the better she knew him, the more she realized she didn’t.

For example: although she now knew why he’d pledged himself to Dumbledore's cause, she had no idea why he'd decided to show her that. 

Though she had her moments of less-than-shining-brilliance, Harry wasn't, by and large, a fool. At the very least, she had strong instincts.

And her instincts were telling her that he wouldn’t have revealed this particular secret if there wasn’t something else hidden, something he'd held in reserve.

~

Harry’s Occlumency lessons weren’t suddenly perfect and painless, of course.

"You haven't been practicing." 

Harry crossed her arms over her chest. "I bloody well have," she informed him acidly. 

Snape whirled on her, robes flaring. "If that were true, I'd expect more progress. _Any_ progress." 

Harry lifted her chin, refusing to back down. "Maybe if you actually taught me something instead of just shoving your way in every time—" 

She regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. When Snape retreated to the far side of his desk like he always did when he wanted to put distance between them, she found herself blushing. She seemed to have been doing that a lot lately. 

She leaned against the door and focused on taking deep, calming breaths, her hands shoved into the pockets of the jeans under her robes. “You could be nicer to me, you know,” she finally said.

Snape looked up at her and glowered. “Oh?” he demanded waspishly. "Should I leave you utterly unprepared for the Dark Lord’s next attack?”

“No, but there has to be a middle ground.”

Snape's glare intensified. “I am not going to coddle you, Potter.”

“I’m not asking you to.” Huffing out a breath, Harry looked away from him, anywhere but at that black gaze. “Wish I had some chocolate,” she muttered to herself.

“Nor will I feed you candy,” came his deadpan response.

Harry couldn’t help it: she started snickering. She didn’t even know why it was funny—just that it was.

Unfortunately, her laughter only seemed to incense him further, if the threatening way he growled, "Miss Potter—" was anything to go by.

Harry spread her arms. “C’mon, Snape," she interrupted. "I’m not laughing at you." Well, she was, but maybe not in the way he thought. She scrubbed a hand through her curls. "Just, Lupin always says that chocolate helps when you’ve been magically drained.”

Indignation rolled off of him in waves. “I am neither your dogfather nor his pet werewolf!”

“Obviously.” Harry held on to the reins of her temper with both hands. She had no idea where this was coming from.

Snape's greasy hair was hanging half-over his face. He swiped it back angrily. “And I don’t like chocolate,” he spat out with finality.

Of course he didn’t.

That was it: Harry’s urge to snicker built to a full on attack of the giggles. She slumped backward against the door, helpless with it, tears streaming from the corners of her eyes.

When she collected herself enough to take a proper look at her companion, his expression of ire had transformed to something that was far less certain of itself. Confusion? Consternation? Exasperation? It made him look younger, anyway, rather closer to the sweet but awkward boy she’d seen in the Pensieve.

Smiling slightly to show she didn’t mean any harm, she waited for his hackles to lower. Talking to Snape was sometimes like calming a skittish animal, Harry thought. Or maybe bowing to a hippogriff.

When the imposing adult man—terror of Gryffindors, bat of the dungeons—had reasserted himself over whatever vulnerability he'd just shown, Snape rose, smoothed a hand down his robes, and said, “Brace yourself, Miss Potter. And please, for my sanity as well as yours, _attempt_ to clear your mind this time.”

Sighing, Harry pushed herself upright and obeyed. He'd said please, after all.

~

Then again, some of their bleakest moments had unexpected (and useful) results.

It was the end of summer in Surrey once again, an evening when the air felt muggy and electric, as if it were about to storm; and Dudley was jeering, “You should hear her at night, moaning for some bloke named Cedric."

She'd meant to wait for her cousin to split off from his posse before she caught his attention. They'd noticed her waiting in the shadows, though, and decided she'd be their last game of the night.

“Who’s Cedric, Potter?” taunted Dudley’s friend Malcolm. “Your boyfriend?”

This made Dudley sputter with laughter. “What kind of poof would want to date her?” he asked incredulously.

“Maybe it’s her boyfriend’s boyfriend,” Malcolm's brother Gordon offered, snickering at his own delightful wit.

“I dunno, Big D,” Piers put in with a lazy drawl. “Your cousin doesn’t have much in the way of tits, but look at those lips. And I bet she makes funny noises when she sucks cock.”

Harry’s mouth dropped open. She’d expected the typical bullying and had been edging backwards, because she highly doubted that any of these gobshites was fast enough to catch her if she made a run for it—and Christ, she wished she wasn’t banned from using magic over the summer—but what Piers had just said stopped her in her tracks. She was usually good at retorts, at fighting fire with fire, but this...this was a different sort of attack entirely. She didn’t have the faintest idea what to say.

Gathering her wits, Harry took a deep breath. She was not going to be intimidated by Dudley's arsehole friends. “I don’t—”

“Don’t what, sweetheart?” Piers interrupted wolfishly.

Harry bristled. “I don’t. Suck. Cock,” she gritted out. 

As the boys started hooting again, Harry realized that engaging with them—saying the words—might have been a mistake.

Malcolm pulled a face. “Come off it, Potter. We all know about that school you go to. The one for deranged slags who can’t keep their legs shut—”

Blood pounding in her ears and heat swamping her face in a wave of revulsion, Harry glanced at her cousin. “That right, Dudders?" She touched the pocket where she’d stowed her wand, hoping fiercely that Dudley wasn’t too dense to recognize the threat.

He got the message, if the color leaving his podgy cheeks was any indication. “No, mates, she’s definitely a virgin,” the boy put in, shaking his head rapidly.

More laughter. Had Dudley thought he was helping? Harry clenched her hands into fists, driving her fingernails into her palms. Sirius had told her to keep her head down and not get into trouble while she was stuck at the Dursleys' over the summer, but it would be worth it, wouldn’t it? To show them exactly how dangerous a witch could be—

“Scared, Potter?” Piers ribbed. “Never had a mumsy to tell you what to do with a—”

An iciness washed over the world. The boys stopped talking, frozen in place. The light sputtered out of the closest lamps, leaving the street in silent darkness. Two graceful, cloaked figures descended from above, extinguishing the stars from the sky.

It was almost a physical relief when Snape retracted his Legilimency and released her from the memory, but Harry still sank to the floor. 

She hid her hot face against her knees, pressing her back to the wall. “Ugh. Why did you have to look at that one again?” she muttered. Her usual headache was making its presence known, this time accompanied by the lovely feeling of being jabbed with an icepick in the back of the neck. She desperately wanted to earn the right to keep the knowledge of Snape’s true loyalties…but she didn’t know how much more of this she could take.

She wasn’t expecting an answer, so it was doubly a shock when she heard him grunt something, then lower a cup of tea into her hands.

Harry blinked, pushing her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. Snape had never offered her tea before.

When she felt herself capable of it, she rose to her feet and sat in his visitors' chair. Snape settled across from her with a second cup in front of himself, although he didn't drink.

“What happened?” he asked quietly.

Harry sipped her tea slowly, savoring the spicy warmth. "You saw it," she eventually answered. It was the closest either of them had come to acknowledging the fact that she'd used Snape to summon her Patronus—which was fine by Harry, since she still felt a bit mortified about the whole thing and had no idea why it had worked.

"What I see is not always coherent."

Harry tilted her head, considering him. “Well, I was really mad,” she said after a pause. “You probably felt it. I was thinking about killing Piers, or maybe Dudley.” She took a deep breath. “But then the Dementors came, so I saved them instead.”

Snape's lips twitched—though whether he was suppressing a frown or a smile, Harry didn't know. “Foolish girl,” he finally replied.

He cleared his throat, a pained expression crossing his face. “If you require counseling, I am not the one to provide it. If you desire an…experienced female confidant to discuss this with, I would suggest your Head of House or Madame Pomfrey.”

Harry wrinkled her nose. “But I wasn’t—they didn’t…do anything to me. And I wasn’t scared.”

“Do forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

She glared. “I was _unsettled._ ”

He lifted a sardonic brow. “Been practicing our vocabulary?”

Harry snorted into her teacup. So what if she wanted to sound intelligent when she spoke to Sn—certain people? “There’s no need to be a git about it,” she settled for saying.

Sniping at each other was familiar, almost comforting. It gave Harry the balance she needed in order to add, “It wasn’t Dudley's lot so much as…" She chewed her lower lip. "I mean, I’m a target, aren’t I? If those little scrotes could look at me that way, what about the Death Eaters?”

Snape regarded her silently. Was he going to mock her for her worries?

Apparently not. After standing abruptly and beginning to pace back and forth, crackling energy contained in measured strides, he said, “As he considers himself above matters of the flesh, the Dark Lord has yet to use rape as a tactic of war. However, you are correct in that a few of his followers are not similarly minded.” Stopping, he spun on one heel to face her again. “Has Black taught you how to castrate an opponent?”

Harry choked. “Er…we haven’t gotten to that one, no.”

The man looked disgusted. “Then what fucking good is he?” he muttered, seemingly to himself.

Harry stared up at her companion. She knew that there was no love lost between him and Sirius, but the strength of his vitriol still caught her off-guard. “So…what?” she eventually challenged. "You're going to...pick up the slack?"

Snape's eyes glittered. “There are several spells that a young woman in your position would benefit from knowing,” he informed her, practically a purr.

Harry tried not to gulp. Oh Merlin.

They didn’t practice any more mental defense that evening, but it was a highly informative session nonetheless.

~

As time passed, Harry knew that her progress in learning Occlumency was still distinctly underwhelming. 

And she also knew why. According to Snape, emotions were what linked memories together, what gave a Legilimens the way forward and deeper into a victim’s mind—and try as she might, Harry couldn’t pull away from her feelings.

It struck her as nothing short of amazing that someone as passionate as Snape was able to compartmentalize to the extent that Voldemort could peer into his mind and think there was nothing to see.

When the year began to draw to a close, she started to wonder if he would need to Obliviate her after all. She didn’t want to risk going away from the safe haven of Hogwarts for the summer without knowing that she could definitely protect Snape’s secret.

Luckily, they had a bit of a breakthrough in mid-May. 

They were in Snape’s office once more, a Wednesday evening. Harry was sitting with her legs folded in his visitors’ chair, and the Potions Master was pacing silently back and forth behind her. 

She wondered crankily how he could have two and a half stone on her and still be lighter on his feet. She'd been up half the night studying for her OWLs, and she felt bloody exhausted. Was Snape just going to pace and scowl and flair his robes out dramatically for their whole hour together? If so, she might just put her head down on his desk and close her eyes…

“Evasion,” her companion snapped out suddenly, jarring her upright again.

Harry blinked groggily. “Pardon?”

He looked at her assessingly. “You are reasonably skilled at it. Perhaps we've been remiss not to play to your strengths."

Harry was still stuck on _evasion._ “You mean…in Quidditch?”

Snape was wearing one of his self-satisfied smiles; he probably couldn't help how creepy it looked. “Largely, although I do believe it transfers to other aspects of your life."

Harry scratched her forehead. Her scar was aching again. “I’m not sure I follow.” And she couldn't figure out if Snape had just given her a compliment or not.

Giving the faintest flick of an eye roll, the man raised his wand in a dueling stance and gestured for her to stand. “I am going to cast the spell again. This time, I want you to evade me. Retreat, and I will pursue."

Harry frowned. “Okay,” she agreed thoughtfully. She didn’t know quite what he meant, but she was willing to try.

When Snape hissed _Legilimens_ and started to insinuate his way into her mind once more, Harry imagined herself flying in circles. The wind in her hair, broomstick held in a tight but flexible grip.

No, it wasn’t fast enough.

She pictured herself as the Snitch.

She darted between memories, circled and dove and ricocheted. She was going faster and faster, and there was no logic or pattern to it, but she always knew where she was.

When the spell ended, Harry realized that Snape had been thrown back. He was winded, leaning with one arm against the wall, his thin chest rising and falling rapidly.

For some reason, Harry found it incredibly difficult to tear her eyes away from this. Maybe because his buttons were so shiny. She only managed once Snape barked, “Good. Repeat it.”

From her surly teacher, that was high praise indeed. Grinning in triumph, Harry squared her shoulders and braced herself for the next round.

~

Although Harry doubted she would ever be really good at Occlumency, she was able, by the end of the year, to tell a false vision from a real one. They’d spent five evenings on that.

When she saw Sirius being captured and tortured by Death Eaters, she could tell that it was too flat to be a real memory—a picture of the thing instead of the thing itself. Its edges were blurry, and there were no smells. Memories had smells.

Voldemort was so angry at his failed attempt to lure her out that he showed his face at the Ministry in front of a dozen witnesses, one of whom was Cornelius Fudge himself. Dumbledore apparently came out of hiding in the nick of time to best Voldemort in a duel, and the Aurors prevented the Death Eaters from breaking into the Department of Mysteries, capturing Lucius Malfoy in the process. 

Fudge resigned, and Delores Umbridge was withdrawn from her post. And one day near the end of term, Dumbledore was back at the head table, looking as twinkly and cheerful as ever. 

The morning before the Leaving Feast, Dumbledore called Harry to his office. He told her about the prophecy; he explained that the “power the Dark Lord knows not” was love. Harry’s mother’s love for her had protected her from Voldemort’s killing curse; it continued to protect her every time she went home to the Dursleys. And love was the root of Harry’s own strength of spirit, which Voldemort would never understand.

Harry felt a bit mystified by this explanation. What did she know about love? 

She kept her thoughts whirling, moving too fast (hopefully) for Dumbledore to read. She didn’t think Snape would want the Headmaster realizing just how much Harry already knew.

~

The evening after the Leaving Feast, thirty minutes before curfew, Harry wore her invisibility cloak down to the dungeons, then knocked on the door to Snape’s office.

She’d thought he might not be there, but he was, his expression growing resigned when he opened the door to a seemingly empty hallway. He held it open long enough for her to slip in, then closed it firmly and crossed his arms over his chest. “If you’re here to wish me a happy summer,” he began, "I can assure you that I have no intention of having anything of the sort."

He was always so grouchy. Harry wondered exactly when she'd started to find it adorable.

“I just wanted to say goodbye,” she explained, flipping her hood back. “And, um, to thank you. For everything you’ve done for me this year. I mean, I might not have told you, but it made loads of difference."

Snape appeared both flummoxed and suspicious at this pronouncement, as he always did whenever she showed him consideration or respect. If he was a lesser man, she suspected he’d be shifting from side to side in discomfort.

"You're welcome," he answered after a pause.

Well. That was actually the last thing she'd expected him to say.

Struck by inspiration and riding a wave of triumph, Harry stood up on her tiptoes and brushed a feather-light kiss against one high cheekbone. 

The look on his face was priceless. “Happy summer, Professor,” she sang on her way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can see, this is where we really jumped the tracks of canon.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Thoughts?


	4. Defense, Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, dear friends! I'm so sorry for the wait. I loved every comment in the interim. Next update will be faster, I promise. 
> 
> This chapter was a monster, so I ended up needing to break it in half. Here's part 1. There's some Ginny/Harry here, but it's fairly brief.

It started at Slughorn's Christmas party. "Mistletoe," Harry had said awkwardly after kissing Ginny Weasley, pointing above the other girl's head. 

That wasn't the real reason, of course. The real reason was that Harry had grown closer to Ginny over the half a summer she'd spent at the Burrow, to the extent that she'd missed her with a surprising fierceness once the school year started and they saw each other less frequently. And now, at the Christmas party, her eye had caught on Ginny leaning against the wall in a corner by herself, and she was beautiful, and Harry had suddenly understood what she'd been feeling all term.

Ginny had snorted at her and kissed her again.

They'd spent the rest of the party holding hands and confessing their feelings, which on Ginny's part had apparently been building for years. Later, Harry learned that Draco Malfoy had tried to gatecrash, only to be taken away by a particularly furious-seeming Snape. 

She regretted that she hadn't been able to follow them, but only a bit.

~

A moan, quickly stifled. The creamy skin of a throat beneath her lips. Arms clenching around her shoulders, slender hips stuttering up against her own—

The protest, of course, was entirely expected. "Harry!" Ginny gasped, shoving her away with a glare. "Not—ah!—not in the hallway!"

It was February, and they'd been dating for two months. Two utterly brilliant months, in Harry's opinion. "But Gin-nee..." she whined with a swallowed laugh, refusing to let go of the redhead's robes.

It was true that all of the other students who were lingering in the hallway after classes were giving the two of them a wide berth. "Ugh," the younger girl said. She wrinkled her nose, then laced her fingers through Harry's and started to drag her down the hall. “In here, then," she grunted, stopping at a familiar door.

It was the girls' loo that housed the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. “What about Moaning Myrtle?” Harry asked curiously as she followed Ginny inside. She'd have to be careful not to speak Parseltongue while they were here.

The door swung closed behind them, and Ginny fisted her hands on her hips. “Myrtle!" she called. "Oi, Myrts, you home?”

There was no answer. 

The redhead kicked open the stall doors for good measure, then crossed her arms and leaned against one of the tiled walls. “She’s probably spying on the prefects’ bath," she offered, the wand in her right hand flicked a quick locking charm toward the door. Her lips spread in a feral grin. Her eyes were wide and laughing. "Looks like we’ve got the whole place to ourselves.”

Harry took a minute to drink the sight in and marvel that this girl—this gorgeous, brilliant girl—wanted to look like that at _her_ , of all people.

Returning the smirk with her own crooked smile, Harry pushed closer to crowd her companion up against the tiles. “You’re a wicked witch, Ginny Weasley,” she informed the other girl solemnly.

“You’re one to talk,” Ginny huffed—and then there were no more words for a time, only shared breaths and a string of sweet kisses, laughing when their noses collided or some of Ginny’s hair got in Harry’s mouth.

And at some point, they had folded to the floor together, which was even better, despite the crick in Harry’s back from the awkward half-curled position, because Ginny was growing bolder, parting Harry's robes to skate her fingers under Harry's shirt hem--broom-riding callouses against sensitive skin, palms pressing the fabric up...

Suddenly, though, Ginny froze. She was staring at the bared skin just to the left of Harry’s navel.

“Harry, what’s—what’s this?”

Harry knew without looking that Ginny was seeing a mark the size of a Galleon and the color of a sun-darkened freckle. It was shaped like an X. She’d always had it, as far as she knew. "My birthmark?" she asked in confusion.

“What’s wrong, Gin?” she added when the redhead continued to stare at it instead of responding.

The younger girl finally wrenched her eyes back up to Harry's. “It’s not a birthmark," she said, her voice eerily wooden. "It’s a soulmark.”

Feeling a bit exposed and cold now, Harry sat up and straightened her glasses, tugging her shirt back down. “What's that?"

“A soulmark,” Ginny repeated slowly, as if to a small child. “It means you have a soulmate.”

That...didn't really clarify anything, actually. Harry cleared her throat. “What’s a soulmate?” she wondered, her voice echoing tinnily in the enclosed space.

Ginny’s lips flattened and started to tremble. 

“Fuck,” she said, burying her head in her hands.

~

And then, somehow, Harry was in the Gryffindor common room in the middle of a group of her yearmates who were babbling about barmy things like fate and true love. And none of it made any bloody sense, but none of them would shut up.

"So, what you’re saying is…that...my soulmate…” Harry felt ridiculous just saying the word. “…will have a mark somewhere on their body that matches mine.”

“Essentially, yes,” Hermione agreed with a nod, looking up from the hefty tome that was open in her lap. "According to this, about one in every seven witches and wizards are marked."

Harry ran her hands through her hair. “It’s always just looked like a birthmark to me,” she pointed out helplessly.

“Oh, it’s definitely a soulmark," Lavender said snidely. She snuggled closer against Ron's side. "I know you were raised by Muggles, Harry, but sometimes your ignorance is just shocking.”

With his arm slung over his girlfriend's shoulders, Ron was turning red. “Lav…” he began.

“Yes, Won-Won?” the girl asked, tilting her face up toward him and simpering.

Ron cleared his throat. “Never mind.”

“Charlie has a mark,” Ginny cut in. She was sitting at one of the windows, her knees drawn up to her chest, a long red scrape from their latest Quidditch practice standing in stark relief on one of her elbows. “It looks just like yours. I mean, not the shape, but the size, the color.” She looked down, her hands balling into fists.

Harry wanted nothing more than to go to her girlfriend and offer some form of comfort—but she knew from trying this multiple times over the last hour that she'd get nothing for her efforts beyond a stony and shadowed stare.

“It means there’s someone out there who’s just destined to love you, Harry,” Parvati said softly into the ensuing silence. She'd been sitting in front of the fire practicing charms when they'd come in. “They're your other half.”

Harry looked down and bit her tongue, not wanting to offend Parvati by telling her how stupid that sounded. “Hermione?” she asked instead, glancing toward her best friend.

Hermione, however, had been glaring toward the loveseat that housed Harry's other best friend, who was currently giving in to the seemingly irresistible urge to stick his tongue in Lavender's mouth again. 

"Hermione," Harry repeated, louder this time. 

Hermione blinked, and her glare finally softened into her research-won't-do-itself frown, which she directed down at the tome again. “It does appear that soulmates are linked on a metaphysical level,” she said after a time. "You should implicitly want to trust and protect the person, and you’ll have a difficult time lying in their presence. Does any of that sound familiar?"

Harry glanced toward Ginny once more. The redhead refused to meet her eyes.

"No," she finally answered, wanting suddenly to just sink into the sofa cushions and disappear. 

But that wasn't an option, really. It never had been, even considering the fact that she owned an invisibility cloak. "Will they at least be the same age as me?" she forced herself to ask. If this was a real thing—and they all seemed convinced that it was—then she needed as much information as possible. Being able to limit the pool of her potential soulmates by age would be a big help.

Hermione flipped through the text some more, finally stopping to trace the words on one page with a finger. “Not necessarily," she muttered after a time. "A pair of soulmates in the fifteenth century were apparently born a hundred and six years apart."

"Oh god," Harry said.

"There's no evidence that they were actually, er, involved with each other," Hermione added hastily. "Physically—um, romantically, I mean." Overcoming her momentary fluster, she pursed her lips. "Of course, there's also no evidence otherwise as well."

"Oh god," Harry repeated, not knowing what else to say.

"But the vast majority of soulmate pairs are nearer in age, within a range of twenty years, give or take," her friend added in her patented Harry-soothing voice.

That was something, Harry supposed.

“You’ll figure it out, Harry,” Parvati put in, obviously intending to be helpful. Tugging her braid in one hand, she gave a wistful sigh. “You’re so lucky. I bet he’ll be so handsome.”

It was Neville, who’d been so quiet until now that Harry had almost forgotten he was sitting next to her, who spoke next. “But he wouldn’t be, would he?” he asked tentatively. He blushed. “I mean, he wouldn’t be a…a _he._ Because Harry's soulmate would be a woman."

Harry wet her lips. "Er..."

“Harry’s bisexual," Ginny explained flatly.

They'd never really talked about that. In fact, Harry had never actually put a name to it before—but the other girl had always been leagues ahead of her in this sort of thing. "Yeah," Harry agreed weakly. 

She glanced around the circle of her friends and housemates to see their reactions. Ron gave her a supportive nod, Neville kept blushing, Parvati smiled slightly, and Lavender looked bored. Ginny was still refusing to meet her eyes.

"So it could be anyone,” Hermione summarized, ever practical. “Though hopefully it would be someone you really like."

Suddenly, Lavender started laughing. “Hey, maybe it’s that prince bloke whose nasty book you moon over every night.”

Ron sent Harry a visibly mortified look, then wrapped a hand around his girlfriend’s arm. “Lav, I think we should go. You were going to help me with that Herbology essay, remember?”

"Oh, right." Lavender batted her lashes at her boyfriend. “Whatever you say, Won-Won. Let's work on it somewhere private.”

Hermione watched them leave with a sour look, then muttered, “With her help, he'll be lucky to get higher than a Troll.” Abruptly, she closed her reference guide and stood. “I’ll go see if there's anything else on this in the library before it closes.” She cast one last look between Harry and the youngest Weasley as she left, her expression full of pity.

Neville and Parvati soon left as well, saying their goodnights. Except for a few third years studying in another corner, Harry and Ginny were finally alone.

Harry had been aching to talk to Ginny privately since this whole debacle began. But now, as she stood and took a few steps closer to where the other girl was perched on the window ledge, she realized that she didn't know what to say.

Ginny didn’t look like her usual feisty and confident self. She looked small. She looked like a person who had lost a childhood dream.

Harry cleared her throat. “Gin—” she began tentatively.

“Harry.” The other witch closed her eyes as if in pain, then opened them again slowly. She lifted her cheek from where it had been pressed against the glass, which was darkening as the evening fell. “Harry. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Sit at the window?” Harry asked, though she already knew that that wasn’t what Ginny meant.

Ginny shook her head. “Be your girlfriend.”

For all that she’d seen it coming, Harry felt as if something inside of herself was collapsing, or maybe constricting, like someone had cast a shrinking charm on her lungs. “You’re breaking up with me?”

Ginny nodded miserably. “I like you so much, but I can’t be with you anymore. Not when there’s someone else out there. I can’t do that to myself.”

What could Harry say to that? “It’s only two lines on my stomach,” she eventually managed. "Just two bloody lines."

“But it _means_ something, Harry. You didn’t grow up with magic, so you might not know—but most people dream of having a soulmate. A person you’re linked to for your whole life.” Ginny’s lower lashes were suspiciously wet. “It’s really fucking romantic.”

Harry couldn't quite believe what she was hearing. “So what you’re telling me is that I don’t even get to choose?" she demanded, hearing the anger rising in her voice. "Forgive me, but I can’t see a single sodding thing that’s romantic about that.”

The other girl straightened her shoulders with a glare of her own. “Trust that a soulmark would be wasted on someone who didn’t appreciate it."

Staring at the redhead, Harry forced herself to take a deep breath. She didn't want to fight. "Ginny,” she began again, "I don’t want to just give up on us. I thought we were great together.”

The redhead stood, wiping the back of a hand across her eyes. “I did too.”

She took a deep breath of her own. “Look, I’ve got homework for DADA. Though I don’t know why I bother—Snape’s been a fucking cunt about everything I do this term.”

As Ginny started to turn, Harry caught her hand. “Then stay. We can try to—”

Ginny pulled her hand away before their fingers could lace together. “No, Harry,” she said, her voice ringing with finality.

She left.

~

In bed that night, Harry curled herself around the Half-Blood Prince's sixth year Advanced Potions textbook and wept. 

She felt wretched the next day—and she suspected she looked vile too, if the glamour Hermione insisted on casting on her before letting her leave their dormitory was any indication. She hadn't bothered looking in the mirror. What was the point? It wasn't like she had a girlfriend to impress anymore.

Unsurprisingly, her performance in her classes was particularly underwhelming. In Charms, she set herself on fire. In Transfigurations, the raven that she'd been trying to transfigure into a writing desk became a vulture instead. And in Defense…

A hand thudded down on the table in front of her. “Miss Potter. Limited as your mental capacity may be, I’d kindly thank you to cease your thick-witted daydreaming and _pay attention._ ” She got the feeling from the blistering emphasis on the last few words that this wasn’t the first time the man had made the request.

Jerking, Harry looked up and found black eyes settled directly on her face. Snape was glowering down at her, his wand in the hand that he hadn't just smacked on her desk.

She held his eyes. “It’s sweet of you to thank me, Professor," she heard herself answering, "but there’s no need. I don’t intend to do it either way.”

The DADA classroom had already been silent—but the silence that fell over it now was a different sort of animal entirely.

“Detention,” Snape said, his diction particularly crisp and vicious. “For your cheek and laziness. 7 p.m., my office.”

Harry glared for show, then ducked her chin to hide the slight curve to her lips. It was her first real smile of the day.

~ 

As she made her way to Snape's new office near the DADA classroom that evening, Harry found herself remembering the previous summer.

It had been a very good one, all in all. She'd spent most of it with the Weasleys, which meant that it had been a summer full of coming down to a warm breakfast every morning, where Mrs. Weasley would fuss at her about how she'd slept and all the other Weasleys would be spread around the table, talking over each other and sending the butter dish crashing back and forth. Then, after the breakfast dishes were washed, maybe they'd all play Quidditch, the hot sunlight making Ginny's hair glow like fire as she ducked around Harry to pluck the snitch from the air. And maybe later, Harry would get to lie in the grass with her two best friends and listen while Ron made jokes and Hermione tore into him about how terrible they were, and Harry would laugh so hard that tears trickled out of her eyes. 

Unlike any of her previous summers, this one was full of the round sort of happiness that comes from being part of a family, accepted and loved unconditionally. And yet, despite this (or perhaps because of it), she'd found her thoughts returning again and again to Severus Snape.

Sometimes, it was on purpose, like when she practiced her own form of Occlumency (every morning just after waking, every night just before bed, and in quiet moments throughout the day when she knew no one would mind if she went missing). Sometimes, it was less so—like when Sirius was visiting, and Harry would be in the middle of talking with him about Grimmauld or her father or the Order when she'd suddenly remember Snape as a young man, dangling upside down while his clothes were casually removed.

More than once, she wanted to ask Sirius about it, about how he could justify having been such a bully.

But secrecy was essential. Even if Snape hadn't made that clear, Harry would have seen it for herself. She couldn't let on to her godfather that Snape had shown her his memories. At the very least, he'd probably rush out and try to duel the man for spending so much time in private with Harry last year.

Most often when she thought of Snape, however, it was at random, a tug at the back of her mind pulling her down a well-trodden path. She'd think of him with gratitude mixed with frustration, and worry, and a certain tremulousness, like there were frogs hopping around inside of her abdomen. Sometimes (like when she remembered how she'd kissed him on the cheek at the end of last year, then scarpered before he could respond), the frogs were wearing tap shoes.

As the summer drew to a close, the world outside the Burrow made its presence known. The war was still on, and things were getting worse. There was a new Minister. Diagon Alley was shut down, except for the grand opening of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. Malfoy was up to something suspicious in Borgin and Burkes.

In the unusual somberness of Platform 9 ¾, Harry suddenly felt as if a giant hand was gripping her on the nape of her neck. She loved Hogwarts, but she couldn't shake the sense that boarding the train was bringing her one step closer to everything falling apart. 

At least she would get to see Snape again, she'd thought as she'd lifted her trunk on board.

~

Of course, it hadn't happened at all like Harry had imagined.

It was after the train; after an oddly drab Tonks had appeared to rescue Harry from her Malfoy-induced paralysis, then patched her up with an Episkey while the Hogwarts Express rolled back on its tracks. That was when Snape had shown up with a lantern in one hand, his sallow face made even sallower by its unsteady light. 

He'd mocked the Auror for falling in love, which Harry hadn't understood at the time; and he hadn't actually looked at Harry herself until Tonks had left.

“Hullo, Severus,” she'd said when they were alone, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jacket from Oxfam and swaying on the balls of her feet.

It wasn't a thing she'd planned, saying his first name—but she was punch-drunk from fear and sudden rescue, and she'd lost loads of blood before Tonks had managed to find her, and he'd been nasty to the Auror, but Harry was still honestly really happy to see him—so why not?

He'd twisted toward her and stared, holding the lantern higher. His eyes flicked over the blood on her face and shirt. "Miss Potter," he answered slowly.

Feeling self-conscious, Harry lifted an arm to scrub at the crust on her cheeks, then straighten her glasses on her nose. "How was your summer?" she asked.

The man's expression of distaste made his whole face twitch. "Pettigrew was living with me."

Harry's eyebrows flew up. No wonder he looked so much more stressed and tired than he had at the end of last year. He'd probably spent the entire break at Voldemort's beck and call, too. "Christ," she answered with a wince.

He snorted, which with Snape was definitely a victory.

Harry swayed on her feet again, closer this time. "I'm all right now," she added, the instinct to offer reassurances. "In case you were worried. Tonks fixed me up, yeah? And I've been practicing what you taught me, so my head's been a lot better lately." 

Crickets chirped. Other nighttime creatures skittered and slid through the underbrush. Their lantern's glow cast a swaying yellow circle in the darkness.

"I'm delighted to hear it," Snape answered, and Harry knew that his sarcastic tone didn't mean it wasn't true.

He'd led her up the path after that, turning and striding away abruptly. After a second of staring at his sharp shoulders, the snap of his robes above his boots, the oily sheen of his hair in the darkness, Harry scrambled to keep up. 

When they were approaching the castle's gates, she kicked at the grass. "About Malfoy..." she began.

Snape stopped walking and twisted toward her, the light swinging with his arm. "I cannot be seen to punish him," he interrupted. There was a strange look to his eyes, almost an imploring one.

Despite the chill in the air, Harry felt a surge of warmth filling her, starting somewhere low in her belly and radiating out. "I know," she agreed quietly, lifting her chin. "I was just going to say that I'll be more careful around him from now on."

Snape huffed out a breath and opened the gates with a spell. 

"Don't believe me?" Harry asked, leading the way through and twisting back to face him.

The wrought-iron bars were closing behind his back. "Not in the slightest,” the man agreed softly.

They hadn't spoken again until they'd reached the school, when he'd made her walk straight into the Great Hall despite the fact that she hadn't had the chance to change into her robes and was still covered in dried blood. Harry had rolled her eyes, but that warm feeling was still there, and so were the tap-dancing frogs. 

“Git,” she'd mouthed over her shoulder at him as she prepared to face the throng.

~

And now, Harry reached his office door and knocked, bouncing twice on the balls of her feet while she waited for an answer. Aside from that one strange conversation, she'd barely had the chance to speak to Snape privately this year. She was looking forward to it, if only because she had no idea what was going to happen next.

"Enter," the familiar baritone called.

Snape was sitting behind his desk, an inkwell at one elbow and a stack of freshly marked essays piled in front of him.

“Miss Potter. You’re not late.”

She'd slipped away from dinner ten minutes early. There was no reason for him to sound so surprised about it. “Nope," she agreed, popping the P.

If he was amused by this, she couldn't tell. Dark eyes assessed her without giving anything away.

He rose to his feet and strode past her in a swirl of robes.

“Come with me,” he ordered, holding open the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the cliffie. Thanks for reading!


	5. Defense, Part II

For her detention, Snape led Harry down to the dungeons and into the potions classroom.

“You’re still brewing?" she wondered in surprise as the professor ignited the braziers under a row of cauldrons with the tip of his wand. "On top of spying and teaching Defense?”

In profile, she saw the man arch a brow. “How do you think the stores in the Infirmary are replenished?”

She’d thought Slughorn would take that over, as the current Potions professor. But then again, she couldn’t see him slaving industriously over cauldrons in his spare time.

“So what should I do?” Harry wondered, nudging the door closed with her foot. She wanted to be able to act naturally around him instead of putting on a show of hostility, and there would be no possibility of that if they could be overheard.

Snape glanced toward the closed door. Harry couldn't tell by his expression whether he approved or disapproved of it, but then she felt the tingle of wards going up. 

“You will prepare ingredients. That should be sufficiently basic for your limited skillset,” he answered shortly, lighting three more braziers and flicking a piece of parchment toward her, which sailed through the air to land on the nearest worktable. 

The parchment proved to be a list of ingredients and methods of preparation. Harry rolled her eyes. “Ta for the vote of confidence,” she muttered under her breath, heading toward the storage cupboard.

After returning with the first few jars (gnat heads, murtlap tentacle, syrup of arnica), Harry took up her place at her regular table and began mincing and dicing and crushing and squeezing, trying not to grimace at the more foul-smelling ingredients or the ones that made awkward squelching sounds as she worked.

For his part, Snape was ignoring her except to levitate the contents of her cutting board into his potions whenever he needed it. He was managing six cauldrons at once now, two already at a boil. 

And yes, that was impressive. And yes, he was sort of fascinating to watch like this, with his grace and focus and total efficiency of movement, utterly precise, nothing wasted.

And yet, she couldn’t help feeling a bit frustrated and angry. After having two Occlumency lessons per week with Snape for the second half of fifth year, she’d gotten used to seeing him in private on a regular basis, to being able to catch glimpses of who he was when he wasn’t wearing his evil-teacher-Death-Eater-spy mask. She didn't know why seeing that had felt so important to her, but it did. 

And she'd _missed_ him this year, dammit.

That morning, she hadn’t realized that she was going to goad him into giving her detention until it had already happened. But afterwards, something that had been tight inside of her chest had loosened, and she’d been able to spend the rest of the day focusing on what might happen that evening instead of searching for Ginny with every glance or remembering how miserable and pathetic she’d felt as she cried herself to sleep the night before.

But here they were, and he wasn’t talking to her or even looking at her. It was like when he’d come to collect her from the train all over again. Was she hideously ugly, all of a sudden? He'd glared a lot, sure--but he'd never had a problem looking at her directly in any of her other years at Hogwarts.

Just when she was working her way toward the head of steam to confront him about this, though, Snape said, “You’ve gotten better.”

He was staring down at her hands, watching her closely as she ground spleenwort. He looked surprised, and also suspicious. 

Any improvements in her technique this year were down to the Half-Blood Prince's book, Harry knew...but she wasn't about to tell Snape that. Not when he'd handed her the perfect opportunity to needle him. “Slughorn’s a good teacher,” she answered innocently.

The noise Snape made in response to this was surprisingly explosive. He probably didn't realize how violently he was stirring his cauldron.

Harry stifled a smirk. “Maybe it’s easier to concentrate without you sweeping around in front of me all the time,” she added, taking pity on the man. It was truer than he would ever suspect.

Snape's look of affront only intensified. “I do not _sweep around_ ,” he answered haughtily.

Harry snorted. "If you say so." She’d be willing to bet fifty Galleons he’d practiced it in front of a mirror when he was younger.

He seemed to read the thought on her face. “Impertinent whelp.”

Harry grinned to herself. “If you say so,” she repeated dutifully.

Silence settled between them again, but this time Harry was smiling. 

~

In an hour, they had finished the six brews, and it was nearly curfew.

Harry was scrubbing the last of the dirty cauldrons (by hand, of course; as Snape had pointed out, she was supposedly being punished). After giving it a final wipe, Harry cleaned her hands and reached into a hidden pocket in her robes.

Clearing her throat, she waited until her professor looked up from decanting the final potion into a row of glass vials and stoppering them. “I keep meaning to tell you," she began when she had his attention. "Sirius gave me this last summer. I thought you might like to see it. It's a letter my mother wrote him after my first birthday." Chewing her lower lip, she held the folded parchment toward him.

The man inhaled audibly. Slowly, he reached between them and took the letter from her grasp.

This was a delicate business, Harry knew. She was sorry to stir up painful memories for Snape, but she’d thought long and hard about how she’d feel if she were in Snape’s position—and she knew she would want to see the letter, even though it had only been about the day to day life in the Potter household, there at the end. Harry had treasured it all year because it was a window into all that had been lost, and she thought that Snape might feel the same.

The man unfolded it and read it swiftly, his dark eyes flickering over the lines. His face was its blankest mask; his thin chest was rising and falling rapidly.

And then Snape seemed somehow to crumple. He braced himself with one hand against the wall, the other curled around his stomach. His shoulders were hunched, his eyes closed behind a curtain of dark hair. He handed the letter back to her without looking.

Taking a step closer, Harry accepted the page back, then raised a hand to his shoulder, letting it hover there without quite touching. “You loved her, didn’t you?” she blurted before she could think better of it.

She half expected Snape to throw her out of the classroom on her arse for asking, but instead he just closed his eyes more tightly.

"Snape?" she pressed, not knowing what to do.

He opened his eyes and stared at the wall, his nostrils flaring. “She was my only friend,” he eventually answered, his voice low and defeated. “Of course I loved her.”

That made Harry's heart give a painful flip-flop, though she didn't know why.

She frowned. But at the risk of sounding daft… “So you weren’t…in love with her? I mean, romantically?”

To her surprise, the suggestion made Snape jerk toward her, his expression suddenly appalled. “Do you believe that I would devote my life to avenging Lily's death because of some—some insipid schoolboy crush?” he snarled, his eyes wide.

"Well...yeah," Harry answered, too taken aback to give him anything but the truth. "But not just a crush!" she added hastily. "You know, true love." People had been throwing that phrase around at _her_ often enough lately, after all.

Snape took what was obviously a calming breath. “Because it’s impossible to simply be a devoted friend with a member of the opposite sex," he sniped after a pause. "Just look at the long-buried passion between yourself and Ronald Weasley.”

Feeling completely confused, Harry crossed her arms over her chest. "Ron and I don't—he's my best mate. That's all."

"And you would feel nothing if you caused your ' _best mate_ ' to be killed."

Snape's words were acidic and mocking, and he'd made his point.

Harry took a deep breath, retracing the thread of the conversation in her mind to see where she'd gone wrong. Why was talking with Snape so damn difficult sometimes? 

But she knew why. He'd been carrying such a deep and humbling grief for so many years, it had made him bitter and mistrustful. Or maybe he'd been that way since being abused by his father as a child, or since the only people who'd offered him acceptance in the wizarding world had been Voldemort and the Death Eaters.

Once again, Harry spoke before considering the consequences. “I think she should have forgiven you. My mother, I mean.”

Snape looked at her as if she’d sprouted a second head. "My actions led to her death."

"Before that, though. In your fifth year. After you apologized for calling her...what you called her."

If anything, Snape seemed even more astonished by this clarification. “I was actively associating with a cult that saw her as less than human and wanted to see her stripped of her wand. She asked me to stop, and I refused.”

Well, that was true.

“Still.” Harry rolled her shoulders, lifting her chin stubbornly. “After you became Dumbledore’s spy, then. She should have understood that you'd changed sides.”

“She did.”

Harry blinked. That wasn’t what she’d expected him to say.

Snape swallowed, the Adam’s apple bobbing in his long throat. “Your mother and I spoke several times in the final year of her life,” he explained, his voice practically a whisper. “She told me that...that the Dark Lord would have learned of the prophecy with or without my interference. And she said she was grateful…" He took a breath. "...for the personal risk I was taking for her family.”

Hearing that made Harry feel the sudden pressure of tears behind her lower lids. “I'm glad. I’m really glad,” she eventually managed through a scratchy throat.

Snape was looking at her warily.

It was an expression that reminded her very strongly of his younger self, the one she'd seen in the Pensieve. He was always so disbelieving when she was sincere. Harry forced herself to smile slightly and avoid making any sudden movements, waiting for his hackles to lower.

When they finally did, she took a deep breath and scrubbed a hand through her hair. "I should be getting back to my tower," she said, though she was reluctant to leave.

Snape cast a Tempus, then looked askance when he saw the results. 

His shoulders lowered even further. "You've broken curfew," he agreed. "Ten points from Gryffindor."

"Hey!"

"I will escort you back."

He opened the door for her and held it, so Harry gave up her effort to glower and trotted out after him.

He led the way to Gryffindor tower in silence. 

Next to the Fat Lady’s portrait, however, Snape paused and seemed to be having some type of internal debate, if the sour face he was making was any indication.

Harry was considering asking if anyone had ever told him his face could get stuck that way (although, knowing Snape, perhaps that was his plan), when she felt the shiver of a privacy ward going up. 

“I assumed that you had something specific you wanted to speak about tonight, considering the lengths you went to for this little…interlude,” the man finally said, looking down his nose at her.

Harry cleared her throat. “Right," she agreed, feeling uncomfortable suddenly. "Yeah, I did.” 

It came back to her in a rush: she'd actually been planning to ask him if he knew anything about soulmates. But now that they were here, Harry found that her mouth was dry, the words sticking in her throat. She was sick of talking and thinking about soulmates, she realized.

“Why are you being rotten to Ginny?” she asked instead.

A blink. Was that guilt coloring his features for a half-second?

If so, the man was quick to regain his customary self-possession. “Miss Weasley’s academic performance has been distinctly sub-par this term,” he sneered.

Harry frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. Ginny’s a natural at Defense.” The younger girl had always stood out in the DA for both the strength and creativity of her spells.

Snape was glaring at her now. “Perhaps her extracurricular activities have left her no time to study,” he answered waspishly.

Harry’s frown deepened as she ran this through the mental Snape translator she’d developed during their Occlumency lessons last year. “Wait. Are you talking about Gin and me being together?”

Crossing his arms, he turned and looked over her head at the dark hallway, the sleeping portraits. “You will not benefit from the distraction.”

Harry gaped at him. Then she narrowed her eyes. 

“So I’m not allowed to date? I have to be nothing but some type of—of masthead for the war effort?”

“Figurehead," Snape corrected. If anything, this line of questioning seemed to make him grow even tenser. "And no, you are not merely a figurehead. You are instrumental.”

“An instrument, then.”

The man grimaced, but he didn’t correct her.

That was so many kinds of not on, Harry didn't even know where to start.

But...there was a grain of truth in what he was saying, wasn't there? Whether she liked it or not, if she believed the Prophecy (and Voldemort certainly did), then yes, she was an instrument of the Light side, Dumbledore's side. Everyone was counting on her. As much as she longed to be a normal teenager, it didn't seem like she would ever get the chance.

Harry chewed her lower lip and looked down. “Well, hurrah—we’re not together anymore. Ginny broke up with me," she answered after a time, knowing that she sounded petulant and stroppy about it.

When she looked back up, Snape was frowning down at her. “I’m sure there are many other young women who would welcome your attentions," he offered stiffly after a pause, sounding as if he was forcing out the words while gritting his teeth.

Harry tilted her head. “Or men,” she added. “Young men.”

Snape didn't do anything so obvious as blink, but Harry knew him well enough now to read his surprise.

She did nothing to hide from his curious gaze. “I like both. Girls and boys,” she explained, feeling that saying this aloud at this point was important for some reason she couldn’t quite name. “Had a crush on Bill Weasley in fourth year, didn't I?”

“Weasleys.” Snape had dropped his chin, and the word was almost a growl. “There are far too many of them.”

And on that very strange note, he spun on one heel and strode away.

~

That night, Harry lay in bed for a long time before falling asleep, reliving the conversation and trying to understand it. Oh, she knew what she'd said and what Snape had answered—but she couldn't help feeling as if something important had happened just below the surface, something that had barely missed being put into words.

But she couldn't name it, and exhaustion finally claimed her.

Her last thought before slipping down the dark well into unconsciousness was of Snape’s eyelashes. They were so long. It was actually almost absurd. They were the kind of eyelashes that were wasted on a man, Aunt Petunia would say. And Uncle Vernon would go beet red, mustache bristling at the thought of a man having any feature that was so very lovely.

Ginny had nice eyelashes too, Harry remembered groggily. She thought of Ginny’s beautiful face and closed her eyes.

~

"I found a much more helpful text in the library last night," Hermione said the next day, poking Harry between the ribs to get her attention.

Harry yelped and rubbed the sore spot, shooting her friend a glare. So maybe she’d been falling asleep over her Charms homework in one of the common room’s well-worn armchairs. That was no call for physical assault.

Hermione, of course, found it easy to dismiss the evil eye. "I've been compiling notes on what you're likely to experience,” she explained in a low voice, rapidly. “A lot of this is based on hearsay rather than sound scientific methods of investigation, keep in mind. But one thing all of the sources agree on is that soulmates dream of each other before they meet."

Harry frowned. “Dream?” she repeated. “Like, while sleeping?”

Hermione shot Harry a very unimpressed look. It reminded her a bit of Snape, actually. “Yes, of course while asleep.” Hermione leaned closer, and her voice grew more animated. “Like I said, that all strikes me as rather washy, but there's another thing that's truly fascinating and much more well-documented. There's compelling evidence that soulmates have the ability to heal each other from grievous injuries via skin-to-skin contact."

In the armchair on Harry’s other side, Ron straightened from the scroll he'd been peering at and let out a bark of laughter. "Shite, Harry. The way your life goes, having a soulmate could be your secret weapon."

Interrupted in her flow of revelations, Hermione peered around Harry and frowned at him. "Hilarious, Ronald," she said scathingly.

Ron cast Hermione a somewhat bashful glance around Harry’s back. "I wasn’t joking," he protested lightly.

Harry sank down farther in her seat. As far as she knew, this was the first time the two had spoken directly in weeks. She’d hate to get in the way.

~

In the beginning of March, Ron ate a drugged chocolate and fell in love with Romilda Vane. Slughorn gave Ron poisoned mead. Harry remembered the Half-Blood Prince's advice just in time.

A week later, Harry took a bludger to the head courtesy of Cormac McLaggen. So she ended up with a cracked skull, spending the weekend in the cot next to Ron's in the infirmary.

In the middle of Saturday night, Harry woke up suddenly for no reason she could name.

Except, as she soon saw, that Snape was standing at the foot of her bed.

Madame Pomfrey kept a nightlight burning at one end of the hospital wing. It cast just enough light for her to make out the man’s face.

He didn't look like himself.

Or maybe it was that he looked even more like himself than usual: his hair was greasier, his eyes more bloodshot, his cheeks sallower, the lines traced more starkly into his skin.

“South America,” he said, his voice too crisp, too precise.

Harry sat up quickly, though it made her head swim. She glanced to her left and saw that Ron was still asleep two cots over. “Pardon?” she asked, shifting her attention to peer up at the professor again.

“The Dark Lord,” Snape said lowly, “would not be able to find you there.”

Harry felt very slow.

“Are…are you asking me to go to South America?” she said.

Snape’s dark eyes were on her face. 

“You want me to run away with you?” Harry repeated, hearing the breathlessness in her own voice.

His eyes closed, but only briefly. “Yes,” he answered with decision when he opened them again.

Harry’s heart galloped in her chest.

She exhaled. “I can’t,” she told him, since it was the only answer she could give.

Snape looked as if she’d struck him.

Harry pressed on, because otherwise she felt like she might start crying. “I can’t leave. I know, with the prophecy… I mean, I don’t want to be the one to fight Voldemort, but I can’t abandon my friends and everyone who’s counting on me.”

The seconds ticked by.

A few days ago, Hagrid had let slip that he'd overheard Snape arguing with the headmaster in Dumbledore's office, although he hadn't been able to tell what about. Harry had intended to find a way to ask the professor about it. Something had happened, she was sure—and it had to be something drastic, to lead Snape to make such a wildly improbable offer. He was devoted to the war, because he was devoted to avenging Harry's mother's death. There was no way he would have suggested abandoning it—that they both abandon it—without a very compelling reason.

She had a really bad feeling about this.

When Snape spoke again, his voice had gone flat, inflectionless. “And if it comes to your death?”

Harry leaned forward some more. “I know I might die,” she answered tiredly—because, really, they’d been over this. Did he think she’d forgot?

His eyes burned into her. “And you wouldn’t regret it?”

Harry frowned at him. “How will I be able to regret anything? I’ll be dead.”

The man at the foot of her bed gave her an incredulous look. “How refreshing to find such nihilism in one so young,” he replied—and his expression and tone were so normal all of a sudden, in comparison to how they’d been for this entire odd conversation, that Harry wanted to laugh.

Instead of laughing, though, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to really think about what he was asking. She didn’t know what happened after death. She just knew that she couldn’t let her fear of it keep her from doing what was right. 

But, at the thought of dying right now, when she was still so young… For one, she would never get to find out who her soulmate was. Though why she was focusing on that, of all things, she had no idea.

“There’s a lot I won’t get the chance to do,” she admitted.

“You’re too young for that,” Snape replied, sounding strangled.

Harry looked at him sharply. She had the sense that they were having two very different conversations, suddenly. "For what?"

His hands, which had been wrapped around the bar at the base of her bed, unclenched and clenched again in what seemed to be an unconscious twitch. And it was bloody impossible to tell in this light, but were his cheeks darkening?

Worried, Harry kicked off the sheets and started to climb out of bed. “Severus?" she questioned. "What’s the matter?”

“Lie back down, you wretched girl!" Snape hissed, sending her a miserable glare. “I don’t…” His shoulders hunched, as if he were in pain. “I can’t…”

He left as abruptly as he’d arrived, banging the infirmary door closed behind him.

“Harry?" Ron asked drowsily, starting awake at the loud noise. "Wotsit—was that Snape?”

Harry stared at where the professor had disappeared. What the hell had just happened? Should she go after him?

She wanted to, but the cracked spot in her skull was begging to differ. If she did try to run after him, she suspected she might faint before she got to the door.

“You were dreaming, Ron," she finally murmured. "Go back to sleep.”

“Hmph." Ron turned over, pulling the blankets back up to his chin. "Never dreamed about Snape before," he muttered into his pillow before he started snoring again.

I've dreamed of him my whole life, Harry thought, though that didn't make any sense. She turned onto her side, and she didn't fall back asleep that night.

~

Harry and Ron were released from the hospital wing, and life went on.

Harry learned that Tom Riddle had once wanted to teach DADA at Hogwarts.

She set Dobby and Kreacher to tail Draco Malfoy and discovered he was doing something in the Room of Requirement.

The Easter holidays came and went with little fanfare. One morning after Quidditch practice when everyone got back, though, Harry saw Ginny snogging Dean Thomas behind the stands. Neither of them spotted her, thank Merlin. She skipped breakfast and spent an hour walking around the lake with her hands shoved in her pockets, glaring at the sunny sky.

In mid-April, Ron broke up with Lavender, and Aragog died, and Slughorn let Harry see what a horcrux was and how many Voldemort had made.

And every day in Defense, she gave her attention to Severus Snape and couldn’t help noticing how much more haggard he was looking as time went on.

She was worried about him. Very worried. Sometimes, she wanted nothing more than to stand up in the middle of class while he was raising his wand in a demonstration and slip between his open arms, pressing herself against him from her forehead to her feet.

She never did, of course. She wasn't mad.

But at the beginning of every DADA class, she would meet Snape's eyes once, just once without any pretense of animosity. Even if he only looked blank back at her, she felt that this was important. I see you, she was saying. I'm here.

As the school year continued to wend toward its close, she had the sense that something was building, gaining momentum. She didn't know what it was, so she didn't know how to stop it. But she had the awful feeling in her gut that everything was about to spin out of control.

~

She still liked to read the Half-Blood Prince's Potions text before bed.

She knew her friends didn't really approve of this or understand why she found it so soothing. But something about the Prince, as she'd taken to calling him, just resonated with Harry. He was so brilliant and funny and obviously lonely, in a way that she didn't think Hermione or Ron could understand. At this point, he felt like a friend.

She liked to skip around, but she'd read the whole thing cover-to-cover at least four times by now. One evening in early May, however, she discovered two pages in the back that were stuck firmly together. 

Her pulse picked up at the thought of something of the Prince's that she hadn't read yet. She peeled the pages apart carefully.

Harry wasn't disappointed. The pages were devoted to the Wiggenweld Potion, including a pull-out box on the potioneer who'd discovered the thickening effects of flobberworm mucous. 

_Apparently, he had one of these asinine soulmarks as well,_ the Prince's spidery writing had added in the margins. _Fat lot of good it did him. The imbecile lived celibate in tender anticipation of his special someone, then choked to death trying to swallow a whole egg when he was thirty._

Harry’s breath caught. She reread the paragraph three times.

 _As well_?

Never mind the unflattering biography—the Prince had a soulmark?

It gave her a warm feeling inside to have something in common with the mystery student—especially considering that he seemed to have the same attitude toward his mark as Harry did toward hers. More importantly, though, this could be a clue to his identity. 

“Ron, do you know if there’s any type of census of people with soulmarks?” Harry asked before Charms the next morning. As a Pureblood, she’d figured that Ron had the best chance among her closest friends of knowing the answer. She’d briefly considered asking Ginny, but that was a bad idea for a variety of reasons. 

The redhead’s eyebrows flew. “I thought you didn’t want to do anything about that,” he pointed out.

Harry shifted her books in her arms. “I changed my mind,” she answered, not quite willing to give more explanation right now.

One of the things she loved about Ron, though, was that he had a good sense for when to back off. He gave her a considering look, then stretched up and scratched his head. “Well, I think the Ministry keeps a registry to help soulmates find each other. Charlie was looking through it a few years ago. But it’s purely voluntary, s’far as I know, so don’t expect everyone and their kneazles to be listed.”

“Well, it’s a place to start. Do you think I could owl for a copy anonymously?”

“No, but I’ll have dad send you one.” 

~

The list arrived a week later, complete with mustard stains. Mr. Weasley must have gotten it during his lunch break.

Harry started at the most recent entries, looking for any names she recognized.

To her surprise, there were quite a few. Justin Finch-Fletchley had a mark? And Angelina Johnson? And Hagrid, of all people? Hopefully the match belonged to Madame Maxime.

Harry kept reading.

Millicent Bulstrode. Euan Abercrombie. Penelope Clearwater.

She made a face. She supposed she’d have to go talk to everyone on the list who was still at Hogwarts to see what shape their marks took. It was conceivable that one of them might have her match, though the thought made her stomach clench.

The scroll was at least twelve feet long, and she was scanning through the names rapidly at this point—until suddenly, with the sight of one particular name, she came to a jarring halt.

_Severus Snape_

Snape…had a soulmate?

Harry blinked, slowly, then sank down to the floor, crossing her legs and leaning her head back against the wall. Snape was the Half-Blood Prince.

It was so obvious, now. She’d known he’d grown up in the same Muggle neighborhood as her mother, but he’d known about magic long before going to Hogwarts; of course he was a half-blood. And he and the Prince were both intelligent, sarcastic, abrasive, and devastatingly good at Potions. She’d been remarkably dense not to see it before.

A sudden thought left her cold. What if Snape’s soulmate had been her mother?

But no, he’d told Harry that he’d never had romantic feelings for Lily Evans. And Harry believed him. Right?

She shook her head, rolling the scroll back up and pressing her palms to her forehead. She needed to talk to the man himself about it. Soon.

~

The chance to talk to Snape came sooner than Harry expected, though the circumstances weren’t exactly ideal.

“Crucio!” Malfoy shouted, his eyes still red from weeping, his face set in a rictus of hate.

The pain started in Harry’s abdomen and burned through her like a wildfire. She staggered back against the bathroom tiles—the same tiles Ginny had pressed her against two months ago—and tried not to scream.

Through the fog of pain, a page full of spidery handwriting— _For enemies_ —flashed into her mind. She raised her wand and let the spell rip itself from her.

After that, everything was tearing flesh, Malfoy’s blood, panic. Myrtle raised a ruckus, and Snape swept in to sing the counterspell and save Malfoy’s life. 

A lot of things happened next, Harry was sure—like the other teachers arriving, Malfoy being taken to the infirmary. But it was hard to keep track of these things, as they all tended to blur with other things, like the shrill unsteadiness in her skull and the way she couldn’t stop her hands from shaking, her teeth from chattering, repeatedly gouging her tongue.

And then Harry was in the empty DADA classroom, standing across from the wall of black that was her professor. And he was talking, wasn’t he? Ranting, more like, with the iciness that he got only when he was blindingly furious.

“Where did you learn that spell?”

Harry knew she’d been unforgivably stupid. There was no way around it. She liked Snape—a lot—but hadn’t she seen in his memories how vicious he'd sometimes been as a younger man?

“It was in your book,” she babbled. “I’m sorry—I didn’t realize it was that dangerous—but I know I shouldn’t’ve, not when I didn’t know what it did—but it was yours, so I thought… And Malfoy had landed Crucio, so I couldn’t think of anything else—”

“Draco cast the Cruciatus on you?”

Harry stared at him, still shaking. She was feeling dizzy, drunk and wobbly from her singed nerves and coming down off the adrenaline high.

Snape let out a string of expletives that would have made Harry’s ears turn red, if she hadn’t spent half the summer with Sirius Black.

Then he did something entirely unexpected.

He laced their hands together.

“Um,” Harry said, highly articulate. 

Mercifully, Snape didn’t reply except to tighten his grip.

Taking a tentative step closer, she dipped her forehead against his chest and focused on breathing. Inhale, exhale. In, out.

Actually, Harry realized, she was starting to feel a bit better.

Exhale, inhale. Out, in.

“You will explain yourself, and then you will go to the infirmary,” Snape snarled into her hair.

Harry twisted to face him. “I told you, Snape. It was in your book.”

“What book?”

“It’s over…in my bag…”

“So get it.”

Glaring and breaking the contact, she summoned her bag wordlessly and shoved it into his chest.

Snape glared at her in turn, then made no compunction about rifling through her possessions. 

He discovered what he was after soon enough. “Where did you get this?” he demanded, pulling the ratty textbook out with a frozen look on his face.

“Slughorn. I’ve had it since the beginning of the year.”

Snape opened the book, then snapped it closed. “You little fool,” he hissed.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said again.

Without the contact of his hands in hers, Harry had started to sway on her feet again, and the lights had become long, eel-like streaks. “Can I just—?” she asked. 

She didn’t know how to finish, but the man seemed to understand. He stepped nearer again and caught her in his arms.

They sank to the ground.

Black robes pooling around her, Harry pressed closer and turned into Snape's embrace, laying her cheek against his shoulder and making herself small so that she could fit more of her body against him. 

She felt tears start to leak from her eyes. He even smelled good. He’d _always_ smelled good.

 _S'pose I need to think of him as Severus now,_ she thought. _Considering._

Snape—Severus—was carding a hand through her hair. She wanted to tell him not to stop, but that would probably make him stop.

She looked up until she could meet dark eyes. “Something’s about to happen, isn’t it? Something big.”

The motions of the hand stilled, then resumed. “Perhaps.”

She could hear his heart beating, she realized. It was fast, very fast.

“Malfoy’s desperate. Whatever he’s up to, it’s all going to come to a head. And you’ll be part of it.”

“Oh?”

“You’re always part of it.” She peered up at him, trying to see past his masks. Into dark eyes, cautious and clever. “You’re not going to tell me.”

The professor didn’t respond. Harry settled her cheek against his shoulder again, and they breathed together. In, out. Out, in.

“I’m going to kill the Headmaster,” Severus said, his voice echoing hollowly in the empty classroom.

What…? No. He was joking. He had to be.

“Right. Pull the other one.” Harry sniffled wetly.

“Miss Potter.” Severus had his hands on her upper arms now and was pushing her back, standing, helping her up. “Go to the infirmary. And if Poppy clears you, go to your dorm and rest.”

Harry had an easier time standing again that she would have expected, but she missed the feel of his skin against hers as soon as it was taken away. She swayed toward him on the balls of her feet. “Kiss me goodbye?” she asked, apropos of nothing.

The man’s eyes darkened, and he swallowed visibly.

Catching her chin and raising it, he kissed her on the forehead, next to her scar.

Harry felt giddy and warm all of a sudden, as if a glow was radiating through her from the point where his lips made contact, the amber-golden light of a soft summer day. 

She wouldn’t feel like that very soon, when she was held motionless and invisible and silenced against the wall of the Astronomy Tower and watched as Severus really did kill Albus Dumbledore. 

But for now, her blood was dancing just under the skin in all the places they'd touched, and her heart was light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave me a comment if you feel like it. I like getting feedback. <3


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